Figure 1: Overview of picoRing mouse, enabling 30-500 uW-class ultra-low-power wireless ring mouse for ubiquitous finger input.The ring can potentially operate over a month on a single charge of a 27 mAh battery (https://youtu.be/7RazVNMx0Ms).

TelemetRing is a batteryless and wireless ring-shaped keyboard that supports command and text entry in daily lives by detecting finger typing on various surfaces. The proposed inductive telemetry approach eliminates bulky batteries or capacitors from the ring part. Each ring consists of a sensor coil (the ring part itself), 1-DoF piezoelectric accelerometer, and varactor diode; moreover, it has different resonant frequencies. Typing shocks slightly shift the resonant frequency, and these are detected by a wrist-mounted readout coil. 5-bit chord keyboard is realized by attaching five sensor rings on five fingers. Our evaluation shows that the prototype achieved the tiny (6 g, 3.5 cm^3) ring sensor and 89.7% of typing detection ratio.

We propose "Ohmic-Sticker'', a novel force-to-motion type input device to extend capacitive touch surfaces. It realizes various types of force-sensitive inputs by simply attaching on to commercial touchpads or touchscreens. A simple force-sensitive-resistor (FSR)-based structure enables thin (less than 2 mm) form factors and battery-less operation. The applied force vector is detected as the leakage current from the corresponding touch surface electrodes by using Ohmic-Touch technology. Ohmic-Sticker can be used for adding force-sensitive interactions to touch surfaces, such as analog push buttons, TrackPoint-like devices, and full 6 DoF controllers for navigating virtual spaces. In this paper, we report a series of investigations on the design requirements of Ohmic-Sticker and some prototypes.We also evaluate the performance of Ohmic-Sticker as a pointing device.

Recently, small and inexpensive portable projectors are commonly being used for presentations. For convenience, it is desired to perform a direct pointing operation on the screen without requiring to grip or mount any device and control the pointer intuitively. Therefore, this study proposes a new touch-operated large-screen projection system using acoustic vibration sensing and a projector-camera system. We apply a continuous signal in the inaudible range of an actuator to a surface and acquire its elastic compliance change as a resonance of sounds. We perform touch detection, position estimation, and pressure estimation by using machine learning techniques. Our actuator and sensor units are small and easy to install on a surface. Furthermore, our system can detect "true" touch without requiring any devices such as pens or pointers. We demonstrate a series of novel interactions for a large-screen projection system with our proposed technology through three applications.

SilentVoice is a new voice input interface device that penetrates the speech-based natural user interface (NUI) in daily life. The proposed "ingressive speech" method enables placement of a microphone very close to the front of the mouth without suffering from pop-noise, capturing very soft speech sounds with a good S/N ratio. It realizes ultra-small (less than 39dB(A)) voice leakage, allowing us to use voice input without annoying surrounding people in public and mobile situations as well as offices and homes. By measuring airflow direction, SilentVoice can easily be separated from normal utterances with 98.8% accuracy; no activation words are needed. It can be used for voice-activated systems with a specially trained voice recognizer; evaluation results yield word error rates (WERs) of 1.8% (speaker-dependent condition), and 7.0% (speaker-independent condition) with a limited dictionary of 85 command sentences. A whisper-like natural voice can also be used for real-time voice communication.

Reflector is a novel direct pointing method that utilizes hidden design space on reflective screens. By aligning a part of the user's onscreen reflection with objects rendered on the screen, Reflector enables (1) distance-independent and (2) private pointing on commodity screens. Reflector can be implemented easily in both desktop and mobile conditions through a single camera installed at the edge of the screen. Reflector's pointing performance was compared to today's major direct input devices: eye trackers and touchscreens. We demonstrate that Reflector allows the user to point more reliably, regardless of distance from the screen, compared to an eye tracker. Further, due to the private nature of an onscreen reflection, Reflector shows a shoulder surfing success rate 20 times lower than that of touchscreens for the task of entering a 4-digit PIN.

Prolonged inactivity in office workers is a well-known contributor to various diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular dysfunction. In recent years, active workstations that incorporate physical activities such as walking and cycling into the workplace have gained significant popularity, owing to the accessibility of the workouts they offer. While their efficacy is well documented in medical and physiological literature, research regarding the user experience of such systems has rarely been performed, despite its importance for interactive systems design. As a case study, we focus on active workstations that incorporate under desk elliptical trainers, and conduct controlled experiments regarding work performance and a four week long field deployment to explore user experience with 13 participants. We investigate how such workouts influence work performance, when and why workers work out during working hours, and the general feelings of workers regarding usage. Our experimental results indicate that while work performance is not influenced, the cognitive load of tasks critically influences workout decisions. Active workstations were alternatively used as mood enhancers, footrests, and for fidgeting, and there exist unique social and technical aspects to be addressed, such as noise issues and space constraints. Our results provide significant implications for the design of active workstations and interactive workplaces in general.

FluxPaper is a new paper-based medium that enables physical movement and dynamic interaction between a high-power magnetized paper and a programmable magnetic field. FluxPaper has a very thin patterned magnetic layer (0.1 mm) pasted behind the paper. A thin but strong neodymium-based magnet realizes fast, powerful, and precise physical actions while retaining the original characteristics of the paper that is widely used in our daily lives. Owing to an effective magnetic pattern and a computer-controlled magnetic field, FluxPaper can add new interaction modality to ordinary paper. We describe the functions of magnetized paper; challenges through realization; and the interaction scenarios in several applications, such as self-alignment, self-construction, floating on the board, and quickly picking out a target card from a stack.

Instant Inkjet Circuits by silver nano-particle ink realized home-brew electric circuit fabrication. However, current method can support only single-layered patterns, and conventional inter-layer connection methods are not suitable. In this paper, we will evaluate various easy-to-use inter-layer connection methods by making via holes, especially the ones made by different drilling mechanisms. We show that the felting needle is the best candidate as it can establish good conductivity immediately after nano-particle ink is printed into the hole, without using any curing process.

We present VacuumTouch, a novel haptic interface architecture for touch screens that provides attractive force feedback to the user's finger. VacuumTouch consists of an air pump and solenoid air valves that connect to the surface of the touch screen and suck the air above the surface where the user's finger makes contact. VacuumTouch does not require the user to hold or attach additional devices to provide the attractive force, which allows for easy interaction with the surface. This paper introduces the implementation of the VacuumTouch architecture and some applications for enhancement of the graphical user interface, namely a suction button, a suction slider, and a suction dial. The quantitative evaluation was conducted with the suction dial and showed that the attractive force provided by VacuumTouch improved the performance of the dial menu interface and its potential effects. At the end of this paper, we discuss the current prototype's advantages and limitations, as well as possible improvements and potential capabilities.

A tap control technique for headphones is proposed. A simple circuit is used to detect tapping of the headphone shell by using the speaker unit in the headphone as a tap sensor. No additional devices are required in the headphone shell and cable, so the user can use their favorite headphones as a controller while listening music. A prototype is implemented with several calibration processes to compensate the differences in headphones and users' tapping actions. Tests confirm that the user can control a music player by tapping regular headphones.

An indicator with switchable faces that suits the cellular phone keypad is proposed and implemented. The prototype, which can show 3 patterns, consists of notch filters (each of which yields a different pattern) and light sources. Each pattern, which emits in a different color, can be activated simply by switching the same color of the illuminating light. Since the patterns do not disturb each other, large characters can be covered on the whole keytop. This indicator is also suitable for handheld/portable devices, such as PDA or notebook PC.

Whisper is a new wrist-worn handset, which is used by inserting the fingertip into the ear canal. A received signal is conveyed from a wrist-mounted actuator to the ear canal via the hand and a finger by bone conduction. The users voice is captured by a microphone mounted on the inside of the wrist. All components of Whisper can be mounted on the wrist, and usability does not de- crease if the size of components is miniaturized. So, both wearability and usability can be achieved together. The way Whisper is operated is similar to that of an ordinary telephone handset. Thus, onlookers may not look upon Whispers operation as talking to oneself, even if the associated PDA is controlled by voice commands. Whis- per is especially effective in a noisy environment. Signals received via bone conduction can be heard clearly in the presence of noise without raising the volume (-12 dB at noise = 90 dB(A) in comparison to cellular phone hand- set). Whisper is also effective in avoiding the annoying problem of the users voice being raised in a noisy situa- tion. Feedback of the users utterance is boosted by bone conduction when covering the ear canal with a fingertip, then the users voice does not need to raised in the pres- ence of noise (-6 dB at noise = 90 dB(A) in comparison to cellular phone handset). Whisper is useful as a voice interface for a wrist-worn PDA and cellular phone.

An evacuation simulator utilizing virtual reality is proposed as a tool for the analysis of human decisions of evacuation from a ship under casualty. The configuration of the simulator was determined and the prototype of the simulator was built. Further test experiments were carried out for checking the prototype. From the experiments, it becomes clear that the analysis method of evacuees' decisions using the evacuation simulator would be appropriate for the purpose.

A really wearable input device "FingeRing" is developed for coming wearable PDAs.By attaching ring shaped sensors on each finger, many commands or characters can be input by finger-tip typing action."FingeRing" can be used on any typing surface such as a knee or desk, so quick operation is realized in any situation while standing or walking.To improve wearability, a very small, ultra low power wireless transmitter is developed that uses the human body ss part of an electric circuit."Direct Coupling" method enables stable communication even when body contacts any grounded surface.A new symbol coding method that combines order and chord typing is also proposed, and useful typing patterns are chosen by typing speed evaluations.Expert users of musical keyboards can input 52 different symbols at speeds of over 200 symbols per minute by using the combination of FingeRing and the new coding method.